In my opinion every member of Congress, plus the Executive and Judicial Branches are all corrupt. If we try to vote someone in to replace them, we will be forced to choose between other equally corrupt individuals offered by both parties.
We the People are fast reaching the point, if we're not there already, where we will be forced to emulate our Forefathers and, after the dust settles and the dead are buried, we will start over again, perhaps with a working model based on true democracy instead of this decaying republic that didn't work for Rome and will not work for us.
The only way to stave off the inevitable is with the institution of a binding national referendum once a year, where we decide the issues and our say is final, over and above our so-called elected representatives. Will they give it to us? What do you think?
I've seen this coming for a long, long time. And you can count me in...
I can't believe this. Why are government workers allowed to load P2P software on their computers at work in the first place. This is a very sneaky way to put P2P on trial
P2P (Peer-to-Peer for those of you who just cannot or will not spell) is foolishly called dangerous. Of course, as pointed out in an earlier post, ARPANET is inherently dangerous inasmuch as it is also a Peer-to-Peer network. And there is a ton of classified or sensitive information available on it. Or DARPA, another government agency run by the Defense Department, that uses ARPANET. Nearly everything done and researched by DARPA is highly classified. Of course, Mr. Waxman et. al., seem to have wax in their ears. Peer-to-Peer is not dangerous. The people using computers are dangerous. Laptops are of course necessary. But downloading programs while those Laptops are not on government property is sheer lunacy. And allowing a dauughter to even use the employees government-issued computer should be a firing offense. Except that Civil Servants, seldom Civil in the sense the dictionaries of the world describe the word and the person, are never fired. They are just moved to another office, often with a raise and praise. No, it isn't Peer-to-Peer that's dangerous. Limewire isn't the only Peer-to-Peer network. YouTube is. Facebook is. Just take the Democratic debate with YouTube a major player. If that isn't Peer-to-Peer I'll kiss your butt on Main Street, no make that in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Politicians who complain about something of this nature need to be brought into the Twentieth Century. After all, they can't find the Twentyfirst with getting to the preceeding century first. They seem to be residing in the same century and have the same naievity of those politicians of the Nineteenth Century. I just wonder what our Founding Fathers would have to say. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, computer users "must all hang together, or we will surely hang seperately".
This just goes to show that the technophobes and fossils in DC have no clue as to what P2P or torrenting files is. You can't accidentally trade classified documents. It has to be deliberately formatted and named, and then uploaded.
I wonder how many thumbscrews the RIAA and MPAA are putting to their paid for politicians to have them come out with this ridiculous statement.
after all, these people were elected ... Voting should be mandatory, just like taxes. It does away with a lot of ambiguity. At the current turnout rates, they are not really representing anyone.
Considering that 2000 election was a fake and 2004 was stolen in Iowa and Florida, it'd only be more work fiddling voting machines etc. :-)
However ... in context of this funny P2P story:
As I recall, FBI had 17 laptops lost/stolen last year, most with classified information. Some similar number of CIA. VA had one with 150,000 confidential military files, go missing.
And don't forget government assessment of our security IT prowess: the DHS was dead last on the previous rating, and 2nd last this time around.
Btw, we have mandatory voting in Australia and still get stupid politicians. Don't voe for fools and you get fined, not much of an improvement.
By their logic every time some moron crashes his car into another ford or gm should be sued instead of the driver.How about personal irresponsibility oh sorry I guess in this era of it's any bodies fault but me we can't possibly blame the user for not ready how to use it before he shares.Oh and by the way what the hell is p2p software doing on a government computer on a secure network I'm sorry but I guess US politicians are just as stupid as the one here in Canada Shakespeare had it almost right "the first thing we should do is hang all the politicians".
You are right. P2P is not supposed to be on any government computer, NIPR, SIPR or otherwise. Private or Seaman Schmuckatelly can't install anything without Admin rights and that's not likely. What you need to notice is most of these reports are because Senator FootInMouth took his work home and worked on his personal .com computer instead or working at work on his .mil or .gov. (Remember when the VA lost all our personal data a year or two ago, the moron took the data home.) Not to mention that if you are going to work on material of any classification at home that computer is supposed to be locked down from family member use anyway. This is the problem and why they think it?s dangerous. If you?re going to bring you work home it shouldn?t be manipulated or stored on the family PC that?s just stupid. It?s not like government computers are safe by any means, but they are safer than most technically illiterate Senators and sadly government workers. What they need to do is make laws banning there illiterate butts from taking their Unclassified For Official Use Only, Confidential, Secret or Employee Vital Statistic crap home to work on their publicly accessible computer.
has anyone emailed waxman or any of the individuals that decided to open their uneducated mouths in this mess? griping about it in a public forum will make you feel better, but won't accomplish much..
you can't even call their agenda's "hidden" any longer it's so blatantly obvious...
Back when we the People were first bent over the barrel and told to drop our pants to satisfy the oil companies greed, I wrote the President and both senators from all fifty states. I got one answer from the rookie senator from Montana, who neatly sidestepped the issues of collusion and price-fixing. What they all knew, and I didn't, was that the Supreme Court would be striking down that nearly 100 year old law that makes collusion and price-fixing between business competitors a crime.
Will I write them again to protest anything? Why bother? If it's not fattening their wallets or further their careers, they don't want to hear it. They have obviously forgotten just who they are supposed to be working for.
Sounds like the politicians know nothing about computer security policies. Yes it would be the software maker's fault if the software shared files that the user told the software not to share, but when that user fails to read and understand the instructions and how to use the software, it is the user's fault not the company. I think these politicians are just looking for someone to knock around. If they are that concerned about the security of the documents, why don't they set up some kind of group of people to oversee the mater and make sure everyone follows the rules?
I know. A novel concept, really. But if the company I work for can effectively block Limewire and other such P2P apps from connecting to the internet and our domain policies can block people from installing it to begin with, I fail to see why the government can't do the same.
Given that, the blame for the leaks doesn't lie with the person who wrote the application. It lies with the IT staff at the agencies where people are allowed to install it unmonitored on sensitive computers.
nah...copyrights issues are too hard to plug and shut P2P down...the constitution keeps getting in the way....and putting the same best practices in place that public companies use (some even in their beloved Sarbanes/Oxley rules) makes too much sense because that is for the peasants outside the government...I know...let's scare them and tell them it threatens the homeland, they'll scream for us to shut it down....more of the same...and it is embarrassing
While I'm generally vote for Republicans, I can't agree with you on this. This has nothing to do with party lines and everything with age. Congress members are old. They don't understand how these things work. I mean think about how often you have to do relatively simple computer tasks for your parents? Yes, Congress is right that it is easy to accidentally share sensitive files on P2P networks. It is also easy to look down the barrel of a gun while it's still loaded with your finger on the trigger if you don't know how a gun works.
Come 20 years, the generation now currently under-40 are going to have a mess undoing the damage the current over-40 generation in Congress to our internet and technology laws. This is happening out of sheer incompetence and lack of knowledge among our law makers.
In the article, it's clear that both Democrats and Republicans (especially those from southern California) are gleefully stomping the Limewire guy. It's digusting.
As for age, I don't know about that. I'd say it has more to do with greed, power, and money.
Gibberish from a politician with staff that don't pay attention
I've got an idea...how about if we start spending money on congressional staffers that actually know enough about technology to advise their bosses about it? How about if we start spending money on training federal IT staffs on how to set up a firewall/netowrk monitoring to eliminate the possibility of a problem?
Oh, wait...we've spent it all!
THAT's harming national security...NOT companies like Limewire. Just like an American..."It's not our fault..."
Yea, I hear you, but when I look at the oversight once your budget hits that $1B mark, I can kind of see that. Actually, in my agency, we don't have many direct line supervisors. There's a lot of support staff, but what do you expect when you have so many rules and laws coming from congress. For me, it's my immediate boss, then the area boss, then the state boss. That's it. The regional chiefs never do any of the supervisor type stuff except to the state supervisor, and tyhen they report directly to the chief of the agency.
Anyone who can install limewire and configure it to share anything not in the share folder should be intelligent enough NOT to.
I'm not believing this 'accidentally' part. I say those files were either never shared or were uploaded intentionally to get a convenient excuse to shut a big P2P network down. And if they get one this big, it's guaranteed to at least frighten some.
What's next? Going after Yahoo, AIM or Skype file transfers?
Actually, LimeWire's Mark Gorton said he was unaware of the enormity of the problem and he told the Congressmen that he would work to fix problems with LimeWire that were brought up by the other witnesses.
According to the Committee's website, The CEO of StreamCast, maker of Morpheus, was invited to sit on the panel but he refused to show up.
Soon, in the interest of national security, the congress will pass legislation to outlaw the Internet. It poses a very real threat to our country by teaching terrorism and spreading theocracy.
There are no p2p networks in North Korea. No internet either. Finally, our congress is realizing everything it has in common with unreformed Stalinism. Now if we can just push a few more mergers through and develop that state-sponsored-monopoly dominated economy we will be set.
Heck, maybe we should even ban peer to peer communications that dont involve computers. If government officials socialize with groups of citizens, they could also be duped into giving out information an unwittingly assisting in a plot.
So, we really need to keep people in their houses, watching Fox News and CNN, and we should put those on a 20 minute tape delay. If people want to assemble in public, they should have to get permits and have an fbi chaperone.
maybe the idiots in congress should look at our WIDE open border with millions ofillegals crossing with the al queda operatives and so on. really shows the very low iq of our senators and congressman!
The government themselves are causing the problem and Congressman "Waxhead" is trying to blame ordinary citizens for the problem.
I'd venture an educated guess that the government workers are using P2P software on government systems either without authorization, or without going through proper procedures for installation and use. If so, they should be either fired, or convicted and sent to spend time in the crowbar hotel.
The more our government pushes for secrecy and restrictions on freedom of communication, the more I'm tempted to just chuck the whole deal out the window and start over. Maybe I should run for office on a platform of rescinding all legislation that restricts speech and freedom? (not to mention outdated laws that are still on the books and used for general harassment by the executive branch)
Employees should NOT have the ability to install programs on their PC. That's LAX Security Problem #1.
Employees should NOT be able to decide what other employees they can send/share information with. ONLY the IT department should decide who gets what privileges to which sensitive data and what level of access they have (Read Only, Read Write, Delete, etc.) That's LAX Security Problem #2.
Such sensitive/classified information should NEVER be stored on a local PC. Only on servers where access to it can be strictly controlled. That's LAX Security Problem #3.
And finally, the IT Security Department has their heads up a dark smelly place for allowing even just one... let alone all three of the above to happen on Government related networks!
Finally, P2P is a protocol and thus blocking ports 1234 & 1235, one can successfully STOP ANY/ALL P2P traffic from floating across the network.
Triggers set up to alert IT Staff can also be set up easily.
The only problem is: One has to be security concious to think of these things.
Sadly, that's something I find lacking in most government networks.
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We the People are fast reaching the point, if we're not there already, where we will be forced to emulate our Forefathers and, after the dust settles and the dead are buried, we will start over again, perhaps with a working model based on true democracy instead of this decaying republic that didn't work for Rome and will not work for us.
The only way to stave off the inevitable is with the institution of a binding national referendum once a year, where we decide the issues and our say is final, over and above our so-called elected representatives. Will they give it to us? What do you think?
I've seen this coming for a long, long time. And you can count me in...
M.L. Bushman
www.mlbushman.com
I wonder how many thumbscrews the RIAA and MPAA are putting to their paid for politicians to have them come out with this ridiculous statement.
Voting should be mandatory, just like taxes. It does away with a lot of ambiguity. At the current turnout rates, they are not really representing anyone.
However ... in context of this funny P2P story:
As I recall, FBI had 17 laptops lost/stolen last year, most with classified information. Some similar number of CIA. VA had one with 150,000 confidential military files, go missing.
And don't forget government assessment of our security IT prowess: the DHS was dead last on the previous rating, and 2nd last this time around.
Btw, we have mandatory voting in Australia and still get stupid politicians. Don't voe for fools and you get fined, not much of an improvement.
you can't even call their agenda's "hidden" any longer it's so blatantly obvious...
Will I write them again to protest anything? Why bother? If it's not fattening their wallets or further their careers, they don't want to hear it. They have obviously forgotten just who they are supposed to be working for.
Given that, the blame for the leaks doesn't lie with the person who wrote the application. It lies with the IT staff at the agencies where people are allowed to install it unmonitored on sensitive computers.
SOLUTION: Access Control Lists and Security Compliance Directives!
Problem Solved.
So why are they mungling about implementing it?
Walt
Come 20 years, the generation now currently under-40 are going to have a mess undoing the damage the current over-40 generation in Congress to our internet and technology laws. This is happening out of sheer incompetence and lack of knowledge among our law makers.
As for age, I don't know about that. I'd say it has more to do with greed, power, and money.
Oh, wait...we've spent it all!
THAT's harming national security...NOT companies like Limewire. Just like an American..."It's not our fault..."
I'm not believing this 'accidentally' part. I say those files were either never shared or were uploaded intentionally to get a convenient excuse to shut a big P2P network down. And if they get one this big, it's guaranteed to at least frighten some.
What's next? Going after Yahoo, AIM or Skype file transfers?
According to the Committee's website, The CEO of StreamCast, maker of Morpheus, was invited to sit on the panel but he refused to show up.
Are cellphones next?
Heck, maybe we should even ban peer to peer communications that dont involve computers. If government officials socialize with groups of citizens, they could also be duped into giving out information an unwittingly assisting in a plot.
So, we really need to keep people in their houses, watching Fox News and CNN, and we should put those on a 20 minute tape delay. If people want to assemble in public, they should have to get permits and have an fbi chaperone.
How about the freakin' federal/government employees NOT using p2p programs while working, being paid off the taxpayers' money ?
A bunch of old farts who never got an idea of what technology is
I'd venture an educated guess that the government workers are using P2P software on government systems either without authorization, or without going through proper procedures for installation and use. If so, they should be either fired, or convicted and sent to spend time in the crowbar hotel.
The more our government pushes for secrecy and restrictions on freedom of communication, the more I'm tempted to just chuck the whole deal out the window and start over. Maybe I should run for office on a platform of rescinding all legislation that restricts speech and freedom? (not to mention outdated laws that are still on the books and used for general harassment by the executive branch)
Employees should NOT be able to decide what other employees they can send/share information with. ONLY the IT department should decide who gets what privileges to which sensitive data and what level of access they have (Read Only, Read Write, Delete, etc.) That's LAX Security Problem #2.
Such sensitive/classified information should NEVER be stored on a local PC. Only on servers where access to it can be strictly controlled. That's LAX Security Problem #3.
And finally, the IT Security Department has their heads up a dark smelly place for allowing even just one... let alone all three of the above to happen on Government related networks!
Finally, P2P is a protocol and thus blocking ports 1234 & 1235, one can successfully STOP ANY/ALL P2P traffic from floating across the network.
Triggers set up to alert IT Staff can also be set up easily.
The only problem is: One has to be security concious to think of these things.
Sadly, that's something I find lacking in most government networks.
Walt